Interesting Article On DFS Games: Bloomberg

[Greg Ambrosius]

We are strong proponents of DFS and especially Fanduel and Draft Kings because they are raising the specter of fantasy sports. Anything that brings in more fantasy players is good for all of us, including season-long games.

That being said, there are concerns about DFS right now and they involve the sharks eating the guppies. It's no different than what we saw in online poker. But some of the facts in this Bloomberg article are pretty amazing. Here's the story:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... y-football

Probably the most amazing statistic from this story was this:

"Analysis from Rotogrinders conducted for Bloomberg shows that the top 100 ranked players enter 330 winning lineups per day, and the top 10 players combine to win an average of 873 times daily. The remaining field of approximately 20,000 players tracked by Rotogrinders wins just 13 times per day, on average."

And these aren't good signs, either:

"And there's evidence that Sud’s victims aren’t all clueless rookies—many are free-spending whales who hope to evolve into sharks in their own right. (Marine metaphors are common when describing the industry but don't always track precisely to actual science.) According to data published in July in Sports Business Journal, 36 percent of lost entry fees on one daily site during the first half of the current baseball season came from just 5 percent of the players. “That 5 percent is a critical number,” says Daniel Singer, a senior adviser at McKinsey & Co.’s Global Sports & Gaming Practice and co-author of the study. These big spenders invested an average of $3,600 on entry fees and lost an average of $1,100, a negative 31 percent return.

"The money-losing players tend to get lucky, win a few times, reinvest the prize money, and eventually lose. The losses are split evenly between daily fantasy sports websites such as DraftKings and FanDuel and the sharks like Sud. Only the top 1.3 percent of players finished in the green during the three months measured by the Sport Business Journal. An unrelated survey of more than 1,400 fantasy sports players conducted by Krejcik of Eilers Research this summer found that 70 percent of participants have lost money."

I don't have any analysis on this, I just thought it was a great read. Check it out and provide your thoughts if you have any. It's definitely a growing area of the market, but with some hurdles ahead of it, don't you think?

[COZ]

Good article. Can't wait till they go belly up. So sick of constantly hearing about daily fantasy...the amount of commercials is obnoxious, ESPN is incessantly promoting it on all their "platforms," and frankly I'm so turned off by the constant in your face of it all, especially DraftKings' stupid commercials, that I'm avoiding it like the plague just to spite them. I'll stick to the misery of season long, at least I have 13 weeks of deluding myself into thinking I have a chance.

COZ

[KenGill]

Greg, this was a good article.

I play DFS for small $$ for NBA and even played a little baseball this year after both of my NFBC teams were eliminated early on. The most interesting thing from this article that I learned was the fact that these companies allow their top players to write computer programs to replace potentially hundreds of players in their lineups at the last minute -- pending some late breaking news.

That's all I need to know to steer clear from any serious financial commitment.

What a joke.

[Frozen Tundra]

DFS is a fad. I only use the Fanduel $50 incentive to get the NFFC discount and am actually using the $50 to get a $1,600 NFFC free entry. Chances are still slim but a lot better than blowing 5 bucks among 300,000 entries.

Outside of that, it's not something I'm interested. It's a loser's game with a few people entering so many lineups. You either play like them or the odds you win are slim to none. It's impossible to hit on top performers on a single week by entering a few entries. I don't think DFS is appealing to serious fantasy players as they plan for the whole year, not just week to week.

[Frozen Tundra]

Greg, this was a good article.

I play DFS for small $$ for NBA and even played a little baseball this year after both of my NFBC teams were eliminated early on. The most interesting thing from this article that I learned was the fact that these companies allow their top players to write computer programs to replace potentially hundreds of players in their lineups at the last minute -- pending some late breaking news.

That's all I need to know to steer clear from any serious financial commitment.

What a joke.

Good point.
Another thing I have noticed is that a "guaranteed" contest is only half full 5 minutes before the start and "miraculously" fills up once the contest starts.
Maybe these DFS sites are auto-entering dummy lineups to double dip? That would be something.

[CoMoHusker]

DFS is a fad. I only use the Fanduel $50 incentive to get the NFFC discount and am actually using the $50 to get a $1,600 NFFC free entry. Chances are still slim but a lot better than blowing 5 bucks among 300,000 entries.

Outside of that, it's not something I'm interested. It's a loser's game with a few people entering so many lineups. You either play like them or the odds you win are slim to none. It's impossible to hit on top performers on a single week by entering a few entries. I don't think DFS is appealing to serious fantasy players as they plan for the whole year, not just week to week.

The tournaments are next to impossible to win big money at. I do think you can have consistent success at the 50/50 contests though. I usually stick to those and enter a handful of cheap tournaments each week just to see if I can hit the lottery.

[boutrous11]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/sport ... ports&_r=0